christmas tree festival

after our meal, we went out to walk it off at my favorite family tradition - the christmas tree festival! the trees are decorated and donated as a fundraiser for the children's hospital. i take pictures of the kids next to their favorite trees (every tree was mason's "favorite"). none of them will let me take anything but an individual picture. we have four pictures of almost every tree... sigh. here is a selection of some of the best pictures:

this 'tree' was made from jeans and belts. isn't it cool?

sock monkeys for nana

this one was pretty cool - a bunch of pvc pipes cut down and arranged in a tree shape. i was thinking it would be a cool thing for matt to make our church hallway. the littles would love pulling out the items.

and back home to celebrate the birthday boy with frozen pumpkin pie - his favorite!

so much to be thankful for today! love.

happy thanksgiving!

passing the time

now everyone waits for the meal... luck for us it was a warm day and they could go play outside!

playing chess with big pop.

mason had been really, really looking forward to playing football.

watching the thanksgiving day parade.

forget the parade - let's open presents!

back to the parade wearing some new slippers from big pop and grandma.

orange on orange

there was still lots of action in the kitchen. madelyn was teaching grandma and manning how to make her apple pie.

and one more gift from big pop and grandma (it's their christmas present for the all the kids):

update: after setting up the xbox one and playing a little bit, we decided that the kids were too young for it and exchanged it for a wiiu. the purpose of the gaming system was for the kids to have a disney infinity. thanks big pop and grandma!

happy birthday, daddy!

daddy's birthday is on thanksgiving this year! he doesn't mind too much because it means that he gets his favorite meal on his birthday. (last night we took him out for barbecue - one of his other favorites.) 

we started the day with presents! i will be busy with the meal the rest of the day and we go to see the christmas trees at night. it was now or be rushed. and who wants to wait for presents?

i love the look between maddux and big pop in this picture.

mason was SO excited about giving his gift to daddy - a chipotle gift card for a 'date night' with each other. yum, yum!

matt had a lava lamp when we first started dating and it didn't make the cut during one of our many moves. last year there was a lava lamp at one of his office white elephant parties and he really tried to leave with it. so when i saw one at bjs a few months ago, i knew that he had to have it for his birthday. the kids were almost as excited as daddy about having one again!

daddy had great fun teasing the kids about getting food since we used all food containers for our wrapping.

we love daddy so much and loved celebrating him! love.